The present invention relates generally to protective leg gear and a method of making the same, especially adapted for sports participants such as hockey goalies or the like.
Protective leg gear, such as hockey goalie pads, provides crucial protection for the leg, ankle and foot by serving as a protective barrier between the goalie's leg and the outer environment or playing area. Such gear is generally adapted to absorb the impact from a high speed object such as an ice hockey puck or street hockey ball as well as protect the wearer from other potentially dangerous objects such as hockey sticks and skate blades that may come in contact with the goalie's legs. Leg protection is crucial for goalies and many manufacturers offer such protective equipment to both professional and amateur sports participants.
Even with the advent of new technology in the area of protective sports equipment, numerous disadvantages and shortcomings exist with currently available protective leg gear. Problems are found both in the overall design of the gear as well as in the manufacturing processes used to fabricate the protective equipment. Such disadvantages and shortcomings are particularly prevalent in protective gear of professional quality which is used at higher levels of competition, whether professional or amateur.
For example, at the design level, typical protective goalie pads have been made from stuffing various fill materials, such as deer hair, kapok, or polyester fiber, into certain specifically shaped pockets, which then are sewn closed. These filled pockets are then assembled together to form the leg gear to protect the wearer. The fill material is chosen to allow adequate impact absorption to provide protection against a puck or other impacts. One substantial shortcoming of these types of filled leg pads, especially the deer hair stuffed pads, is that the fill material after extended use and, over time, suffers significant breakdown. Namely, as time and wear progresses, the deer hair turns increasingly brittle and will break into smaller and smaller fragments leading to less than adequate shock absorption for the wearer. Also, kapok is quite expensive and generally unavailable.
In addition to unwanted breakdown, the fill material, particularly polyester, is often undesirably heavy and can unnecessarily weigh down the wearer of the pads. Thus, although these stuffed pads may adequately protect the wearer from the impact of a high speed hockey puck, at least before the fill material breaks down, such protection is provided at the expense of increased weight on the legs thereby hindering the agility and mobility of the goalie.
In addition to the weight problem of the typical stuffed protective pads, another shortcoming is that they generally do not matchingly conform to the contour of the wearer's legs and therefore must be sufficiently "broken-in" to provide adequate comfort to the wearer. Only after such pads are "broken-in" will the pad be less of a hindrance to the mobility of the goalie. Breaking in the pads is especially important at the ankle, and existing pads do not provide an adequate and appropriately shaped bend in the ankle area and thus must be repeatedly worn to provide a sharp enough and appropriately shaped bend to be comfortable to wear and not interfere with the goalie's mobility. Similarly, the knee area of existing pads is stiff and not contoured to the shape of the human knee. It too requires a break-in period before the pads are comfortable and do not hinder the goalie's movements. The process of breaking in the pads often takes numerous hours of wearing the pads which are often initially uncomfortable until fully broken-in to the satisfaction of the wearer. Further, during such a break-in period, the pad is subject to undue wear which limits the useful life of the pad.
The sports equipment industry has attempted to address mainly the weight problem of usual stuffed protective pads by using synthetic foam cushioning materials to provide the requisite padding and protection. Although such foam pads are lighter than their stuffed counterparts, they too suffer from the problem of requiring a break-in period in order to achieve a sufficient comfort level to the wearer. Again, adequate break-in is necessary due to the fact that the foam provided around the leg of the wearer, typically in the form of a smooth and straight groove, does not correspondingly match the contours of a human leg, especially in the ankle and knee areas.
In addition, the foam cushioning materials used in existing pads do not exhibit the most desirable "flex" characteristics. For instance, it is often necessary for goalies to come close to doing a "split" so that one leg rests on the ice from the knee to the toe (the other leg rests on the ice from the back of the knee to the heel). The toe of the skate is pointed back so that the point of the toe aligns with the plane of the shin and knee. This requires the pad to flex in a reverse direction from the direction it must flex when the goalie bends his knee. Existing pads are made of foam cushioning materials which do not readily flex in both directions.
Furthermore, in addition to the aforementioned design difficulties other problems also exist at the assembly stage which unnecessarily add to increased manufacturing costs. For example, with the typical stuffed pads, it is often time-consuming and labor-intensive to first hand stuff and then close up each individual pocket which ultimately forms the protective pad. These increased manufacturing costs to the producer are usually passed on to the customer in the form of higher priced protective leg gear.
Even with the increased use of synthetic foam instead of other fill materials, many manufacturing processes are still unnecessarily labor intensive in that the foam must be cut and shaped into individual sections, typically four or five pieces, that are then hinged together to form the full pads. Such angling, cutting and hinging of the foam is necessary to achieve a better fit, but also increases manufacturing costs by also being both labor-intensive and time-consuming.
German Offenlegungsschrift 3,433,005 discloses a leg protector and method for making the same, most likely for street hockey and not a high level goal pad for ice hockey, whereby the leg protector is made from two continuous laminated foam layers (4, 5), whereby the density of the outer foam material (4) of the cushion material is substantially less than that of the inner foam material layer (5), as well as a cushioning material (10). The disclosure relates primarily to the formation of the continuous laminated layers. The cushioning material (10) of the body protector is shown as being made up of three separate longitudinal pieces of material. Applicant herein believes that the cushioning portion (10) of the body protector in this reference is made up of a foam material which is at least partially cut by hand, if not entirely cut by hand. Consistent with this belief, the reference shows three separate pieces which make up the back portion of the body protector. Instead of cutting out the hollow for the leg, it would be easier to cut three separate pieces into the shapes shown and attach them as shown in the reference. Thus, although this reference appears to be directed to decreasing manual labor and costs, its efforts in this regard focus on the continuous laminated protective portion in the front of the body protector. The construction of the rear portion of the body protector still results in high manufacturing costs in view of the manual labor involved. The pad shown in this reference does not have a bent portion for the thigh, a knee area or a relatively sharp angle at the ankle area.
Some high level goal pads which are available for ice hockey are laboriously cut and shaped from foam and have outer materials which are designed to accept a sharp angle at the ankle after a break-in period. None are designed to have a structure which requires no break-in period, but rather provides at the outset a superior-fitting pad in the area of the ankle (as well as in the area of the knee).
Accordingly, existing protective leg gear, whether commercialized or simply described in a patent reference, has suffered from the significant shortcomings explained above. To summarize, leg gear is either too heavy, requires an extensive break-in period, or is costly to manufacture. Thus, there is a great and a long felt need to solve these aforementioned problems by providing light-weight leg gear which does not require an extensive break-in period as required by existing pads. Such leg gear should be manufactured and assembled in a manner that takes fewer steps, or at least less involved steps, to result in a lower cost for both the manufacturer and ultimately the consumer.